"All over!" he gasped to himself.

"I hardly know how to tell the miserable story," went on the letter, "but as it must be told I suppose I had better begin from the beginning.

A month ago I went with my father and my aunt to the Hunt Ball at Atherton, and there I met Sir Alfred Croston, a middle-aged gentleman, who danced with me several times. I did not care about him much, but he made himself very agreeable, and when I got home aunt--you know her nasty way--congratulated me on my conquest. Well, next day he came to call, and papa asked him to stop to dinner, and he took me in, and before he went away he told me that he was coming to stop at the George Inn to fish for trout in the lake. After that he came here every day, and whenever I went out walking he always met me, and really was kind and nice. At last one day he asked me to marry him, and I was very angry and told him that I was engaged to a gentleman in the army, who was in South Africa. He laughed, and said South Africa was a long way off, and I hated him for it. That evening papa and aunt set on me--you know they neither of them liked our engagement--and told me that our affair was perfectly silly, and that I must be mad to refuse such an offer. And so it went on, for he would not take 'no' for an answer; and at last, dear, I had to give in, for they gave me no peace, and papa implored me to consent for his sake. He said the marriage would be the making of him, and now I suppose I am engaged. Dear, dear George, don't be angry with me, for it is not my fault, and I suppose after all we could not have got married, for we have so little money. I do love you, but I can't help myself. I hope you won't forget me, or marry anybody else--at least, not just at present--for I cannot bear to think about it. Write to me and tell me you won't forget me, and that you are not angry with me. Do you want your letters back? If you burn mine that will do.

Good-bye, dear! If you only knew what I suffer! It is all very well to talk like aunt does about settlements and diamonds, but they can't make up to me for you. Good-bye, dear, I cannot write any more because my head aches so.--Ever yours,

"Madeline Spenser."

When George Peritt, _alias_ Bottles, had finished reading and re-reading this letter, he folded it up neatly and put it, after his methodical fashion, into his pocket. Then he sat and stared at the red camellia blooms before him, that somehow looked as indistinct and misty as though they were fifty yards off instead of so many inches.

"It is a great blow," he said to himself. "Poor Madeline! How she must suffer!"

Presently he rose and walked--rather unsteadily, for he felt much upset--to his quarters, and, taking a sheet of notepaper, wrote the following letter to catch the outgoing mail:--

"My dear Madeline,--I have got your letter putting an end to our engagement. I don't want to dwell on myself when you must have so much to suffer, but I must say that it has been, and is, a great blow to me.

I have loved you for so many years, ever since we were babies, I think; it does seem hard to lose you now after all. I thought that when we got home I might get the adjutancy of a militia regiment, and that we might have been married. I think we might have managed on five hundred a year, though perhaps I have no right to expect you to give up comforts and luxuries to which you are accustomed; but I am afraid that when one is in love one is apt to be selfish. However, all that is done with now, as, of course, putting everything else aside, I could not think of standing in your way in life. I love you much too well for that, dear Madeline, and you are too beautiful and delicate to be the wife of a poor subaltern with little beside his pay. I can honestly say that I hope you will be happy. I don't ask you to think of me too often, as that might make you less so, but perhaps sometimes when you are quiet you will spare your old lover a thought or two, because I am sure n.o.body could care for you more than I do. You need not be afraid that I shall forget you or marry anybody else. I shall do neither the one nor the other. I must close this now to catch the mail; I don't know that there is anything more to say. It is a hard trial--very; but it is no good being weak and giving way, and it consoles me to think that you are 'bettering yourself' as the servants say. Good-bye, dear Madeline. May G.o.d bless you, is now and ever my earnest prayer.

"J. G. Peritt."

Scarcely was this letter finished and hastily dispatched when a loud voice was heard calling, "Bottles, Bottles, my boy, come rejoice with me; the orders have come--we sail in a fortnight;" followed by the owner of the voice, another subaltern, and our hero's bosom friend. "Why, you don't seem very elated," said he of the voice, noting his friend's dejected and somewhat dazed appearance.

"No--that is, not particularly. So you sail in a fortnight, do you?"

"'You sail?' What do you mean? Why, we _all_ sail, of course, from the colonel down to the drummer-boy."

"I don't think that I--I am going to sail, Jack," was the hesitating answer.

"Look here, old fellow, are you off your head, or have you been liquoring up, or what?"

"No--that is, I don't think so; certainly not the first--the second, I mean."

"Then what do you mean?"

"I mean that, in short, I am sending in my papers. I like this climate --I, in short, am going to take to farming."

"Sending in your papers! Going to take to farming! And in this G.o.d-forsaken hole, too. You _must_ be screwed."

"No, indeed. It is only ten o'clock."

"And how about getting married, and the girl you are engaged to, and whom you are looking forward so much to seeing. Is she going to take to farming?"

Bottles winced visibly.

"No, you see--in short, we have put an end to that. I am not engaged now."

"Oh, indeed," said the friend, and awkwardly departed.

II

Twelve years have pa.s.sed since Bottles sent in his papers, and in twelve years many things happen. Amongst them recently it had happened that our hero's only and elder brother had, owing to an unexpected development of consumption among the expectant heirs, tumbled into a baronetcy and eight thousand a year, and Bottles himself into a modest but to him most ample fortune of as many hundred. When the news reached him he was the captain of a volunteer corps engaged in one of the numerous Basuto wars in the Cape Colony. He served the campaign out, and then, in obedience to his brother's entreaties and a natural craving to see his native land, after an absence of nearly fourteen years, resigned his commission and returned to England.

Thus it came to pa.s.s that the next scene of this little history opens, not upon the South African veld, or in a whitewashed house in some half-grown, hobbledehoy colonial town, but in a set of the most comfortable chambers in the Albany, the local and appropriate habitation of the bachelor brother aforesaid, Sir Eustace Peritt.

In a very comfortable arm-chair in front of a warm fire (for the month is November) sits the Bottles of old days--bigger, uglier, shyer than ever, and in addition, disfigured by an a.s.segai wound through the cheek.

Opposite to him, and peering at him occasionally with fond curiosity through an eyegla.s.s, is his brother, a very different stamp of man.

Sir Eustace Peritt is a well-preserved, London-looking gentleman, of apparently any age between thirty and fifty. His eye is so bright, his figure so well preserved, that to judge from appearances alone you would put him down to the former age. But when you come to know him so as to be able to measure his consummate knowledge of the world, and to have the opportunity of reflecting upon the good-natured but profound cynicism which pleasantly pervades his talk as absolutely as the flavour of lemon pervades rum punch, you would be inclined to a.s.sign his natal day to a much earlier date. In reality he was forty, neither more nor less, and had both preserved his youthful appearance and gained the mellowness of his experience by a judicious use of the opportunities of life.

"Well, my dear George," said Sir Eustace, addressing his brother--determined to take this occasion of meeting after so long a time to be rid of the nickname "Bottles," which he hated--"I haven't had such a pleasure for years."

"As--as what?"

"As meeting you again, of course. When I saw you on the vessel I knew you at once. You have not changed at all, unless expansion can be called a change."

"Nor have you, Eustace, unless contraction can be called a change. Your waist used to be bigger, you know."

"Ah, George, I drank beer in those days; it is one of things of which I have lived to see the folly. In fact, there are not many things of which I have not lived to see the folly."

"Except living itself, I suppose?"

"Exactly--except living. I have no wish to follow the example of our poor cousins," he answered with a sigh, "to whose considerate behaviour, however," he added, brightening, "we owe our present improved position."

Then came a pause.

"Fourteen years is a long time, George; you must have had a rough time of it."

"Yes, pretty rough. I have seen a good deal of irregular service, you know."

"And never got anything out of it, I suppose?"

"Oh, yes; I have got my bread and b.u.t.ter, which is all I am worth."

Sir Eustace looked at his brother doubtfully through his eyegla.s.s. "You are modest," he said; "that does not do. You must have a better opinion of yourself if you want to get on in the world."

"I don't want to get on. I am quite content to earn a living, and I am modest because I have seen so many better men fare worse."

"But now you need not earn a living any more. What do you propose to do?

Live in town? I can set you going in a very good lot. You will be quite a lion with that hole in your cheek--by the way, you must tell me the story. And then, you see, if anything happens to me you stand in for the t.i.tle and estates. That will be quite enough to float you."

Bottles writhed uneasily in his chair. "Thank you, Eustace; but really I must ask you--in short, I don't want to be floated or anything of the sort. I would rather go back to South Africa and my volunteer corps. I would indeed. I hate strangers, and society, and all that sort of thing.

I'm not fit for it like you."

"Then what do you mean to do--get married and live in the country?"

Bottles coloured a little through his sun-tanned skin--a fact that did not escape the eyegla.s.s of his observant brother. "No, I am not going to get married, certainly not."